


Put on Sunday Shoes

by j_marquis



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst, Birthdays, Multi, mentions of drinking, mentions of drug use, mentions of smoking, only one of these relationships works out, vincent doesn't like birthdays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:46:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_marquis/pseuds/j_marquis
Summary: Vincent tries to forget his birthday. Someone always remembers.





	Put on Sunday Shoes

Vincent didn't really make a point of remembering his birthday. As a child, it was just another day. Maybe, if he was lucky, mother would give him dessert or father would be home to hand him a toy or another book. Once his father took him hunting to celebrate, in the woods outside of Wutai where he was doing his research. Death never sat well with Vincent. And standing there, newly nine years old, a dead boar bleeding out, he didn't want it to be his birthday. He didn't want his father to tell him they were spending the day together. He didn't want to watch the thing, struggling for breath, blood heaving out with each dying pulse of it's heart. He didn't want the pride in his father's eyes as Vincent stood there, the shotgun in both hands, watching the boar die.

He forgot his birthday for years after that.

The Turks had their own way of finding things out. So of course they wanted to celebrate their newest sniper turning eighteen. Wild debauchery, renting an entire bar in the slums, rented men and women undressing, pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes and offering substances and stimulants Vincent didn't want. The party was for them. Not for him. The Turks threw the party they wanted and used Vincent as their excuse.

And so he sat with his drink in his hand and he watched the only person he wanted to see. Veld had brought him in to the Turks, trained with him and taught him, held his hair back when he drank too much and coaxed him through his first human kill. Vincent always loved too hard, too fast, and Veld was the first time he had felt that. All encompassing, he could hardly look anywhere else. Sloppy with alcohol and things Vincent forgot, they kissed under streetlights and slept in a cheap motel, and, laying back as Veld took him, Vincent realized it would never last.

Veld only loved him when he was drunk.

He didn't ask how Lucrecia knew he was turning twenty seven. She had her ways, and, after all, by then he would have followed her blind to the ends of the earth. She packed a picnic basket and poured him champagne and they sat in the shade under the old tree behind the Nibelheim manor house. He listened while she spoke of her experiments and pretended not to notice that she didn't really see him. And he kissed her and he told her she was beautiful and that had to be enough. It was all he was allowed.

He pretended he didn't hear when she got up in the middle of the night to go to Hojo's room, pretended he didn't know what they were doing. Pretended he still had a chance, that she would love him just the way he thought he loved her. Pretended one day she would see him, Vincent, not a ghost. Loved too much, too hard, and in the end it would be the death of him. For her, he never saw twenty-eight.

He lost track of time.

Didn't know what birthday it was when Reeve used the data he had found in the Shinra archives to add Vincent's birthday to the list of the ones he needed to celebrate. It didn't matter. Just another day. Like it had been with the Turks, it was an excuse for his companions to celebrate, their way. Not minding what he would have wanted, they used it as an excuse to see each other after the meteor fell. Vincent attended, more of obligation than anything else.

Cid knew. Vincent watched him, quietly drinking, and when Cid caught his stare he nodded to the door, followed Vincent outside the Seventh Heaven and offered him a cigarette. Watched in silence as the sun went down through the haze of cigarette smoke and whiskey. Cid saw him, and all his scars. Saw the nightmares and the monsters and still offered him companionship, quiet and steady. It wasn't the too hard, too fast unthinking blind love of his youth, it was something else when Cid offered his hand, and Vincent took it. Offered his embrace, and Vincent stepped into it.

Offered his kiss, and saw it returned a thousandfold.

Ageless and unchanging, Vincent learned that love is slow.

**Author's Note:**

> aftepes.tumblr.com


End file.
